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Method Detection/Quantitation and Calibration
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) over time has produced, referenced, and/or recommended many different procedures across our many diverse programs for the calculation of limits of detection and quantitation. These calculations go by many different names (e.g., method of detection, lower detection limit, limit of quantitation), but in many cases, reference the same result a program is attempting to achieve with the calculation.
The Office of Water (OW) convened a Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Workgroup to discuss several processes for method detection and quantitation for the Clean Water Act (CWA), specifically. Several organizations wrote letters to the Agency thru the Forum on Environmental Measurement (FEM) around this same time to request that a serious look be taken at all the procedures used across the Agency to find a single procedure for use by the entire Agency. Because this committee asked for consideration of their recommendations in CWA and other relevant Agency programs, the FEM agreed to create an Action Team to review the committee's December 1997 report to the Administrator. The FEM's charge from the Science Policy Council (SPC) is to consider all the existing information (e.g., the FACA report; other considerations or revisions for CWA use; approaches that exist across all the Agency programs; needs our diverse program have for method detection and quantitation) and make a recommendation to the SPC for greater consistency across the Agency for method detection and quantitation to the extent practical.
On a similar front, issues have also been raised to the FEM regarding the adequacy of measuring the acceptability of the calibration curve. A small workgroup convened to explore the severity of calibration problems with responses from across the Agency that our laboratories face the same problems and calibration could stand to be improved.
This Action Team is addressing both of these questions. Under development is a glossary of consistent terminology and a summary table of acceptable calculations with the appropriate use for each. Once committee work is complete, the final product approved by the SPC for Agency use will be posted here.